With 100% English Ancestry, I thought it might be really difficult to trace my ancestors back in England from Canada. Only my mother, her father and his mother were born in Canada. This Blog will talk about researching my English ancestors from Canada but also the ancestors of our son in law whose families stretch back far into Colonial French Canada. My one name study of Blake and of Pincombe also dominate my blog these days.

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Immersed in research

My husband mentioned to me that I haven't written to my blog since the 3rd of April. I decided to work with the Tanguay CD that he had given me and have been completely immersed ever since. It is amazing to use it really. All the female lines that I couldn't work out because I couldn't locate marriages have now settled into place. I worked through A,B,C and into D names and then decided this is not the most practical way for me to proceed with the family tree. I am back to proving backwards once again. I am working my way back in each line to the 3x great grandparent and have just five to go on the male side and then have to do all the work on the female side. Then I will work on the 4x great grandparents straight across the table and move back to 5 when I complete 4. I can see that is a practical step with French Canadian research. I have very very few lines that came after the mid 1600s. As I go I am pulling any records that I have not yet pulled and I am working my way back in Tanguay for each surname (obviously this will always be half since I would have done the male line back as soon as it appeared). I think this will be a more practical approach but working for the last 1.5 weeks has certainly give me a lot of respect for the work that went into the Tanguay Collection. Although I have found a few items that I would query and I will now make a list of them, I find very very few.

Now that we are out biking, hiking and soon gardening my energy is depleting and I accomplish considerably less in a day than I was doing in the wintertime when the nights are long and I can read my fiche reader or my computer screen readily without sunlight popping into my eyes.

We have planned a whole lot of trips as well this year. We are going to do a tour of the Maritimes, a trial run of our fall trip to the Mohawk Valley where my husband and his friend lead the united empire loyalist group, a family reunion where my husband is President this year, and a trip to Europe with some extra time in London with one day at Kew. I am restricting it to one day because there isn't that much that I want to look up. Mostly I can just buy all the documents on line but it would be nice to look at the census for 1911 and my close family since my great grandparents were all still alive as were my great aunts and uncles. It is the time before the war that killed so many of my ancestors it would appear.

I have also ordered the Family Finder test from FT DNA. I am curious if it will bring out any of my great grandmother Taylor's relatives as I know all my close relatives on my father's side and my mother's father's side. Just the one line that is curious and it is now becoming quite selectively small as more information flows in on the Buller line which was my grandmother's maiden name. A Buller married a Taylor at Birmingham or thereabouts (marriage is still missing) in 1885/1886. The interesting part is finding that Edwin's brother Clemence Charles Buller was in South Africa working (he was a jeweller's assistant on the 1871 census) and my grandmother used to say that her father was injured in Africa so that would lead one to suspect that he was in South Africa with him. Could he have married Ellen Taylor there? Such mysteries. It is probably a simple matter but I haven't found the answer yet but it has become a much smaller line than when I first approached it and knew only my great grandparent's Buller and Taylor names.

I am starting to feel the pull between our daughters and where we will live in the future. They live about 2500 kilometres apart and eventually we will live near to one of them I would suspect. I am still very ambivalent about grandchildren and do not mind if we never have any. Somehow the thought of my descendants going far into the future is unappealing to me which is perhaps weird but as I watch the world decaying around us I really wonder about the world in a hundred years time. The actions that need to be taken seem to take such a very long time. However, I leave such things up to our daughters - it is their life to live.